1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a printing device that performs printing on continuous forms paper or a cut sheet and a control method of the printing device.
2. Description of the Related Art
As the high quality of a printed image and a high printing speed in the printing device are proceeding, high performance and multi functions of a printer control device (controller) that controls the printer device are correspondingly proceeding. Meanwhile, the high performance and multi-functional printer control device may have complicated configuration and a longer development time may be required. Therefore, a technology that controls not only a printer device having a low printing speed but also a printer device having a high printing speed using the same architecture and controls various printer devices using one kind of printer control device has been developed.
Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 11-165450 discloses a configuration in which a plurality of expansion slots are provided in a CPU board in which a CPU (central processing unit) is mounted, and a transfer board that transfers data to various printer engines is loaded in the expansion slots. According to Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 11-165450, it is possible to implement a printer control device that controls any of a single engine type and a tandem engine type.
However, schematically, a paper which is a printing target of the printer device is broadly divided into continuous forms paper which is provided as a roll paper and has continuous pages and a cut sheet which is cut to have a predetermined size such as A4 or B4 and provided. The continuous forms paper and the cut sheet have different concepts in view of pages and thus paper conveyance control is also different accordingly.
Therefore, a printer control device that is capable of performing high quality printing at a high speed and being applied to both the continuous forms paper and the cut sheet.
In the above-mentioned Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 11-165450, a transfer board is added to the expansion slots so as to be applied to the printer control device to a plurality of kinds of engines. However, Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 11-165450 fails to commonly control conveyance of paper when the conveyance control of paper such as the continuous forms paper and the cut sheet is different.
There is a need to enable common control for different paper conveyance methods.